


20 Years

by biblionerd07



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Dialogue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles couldn't give Bass a clean break--he left an apology and fled.  Bass refuses to stop looking for Miles, and finds him in his grungy bar in Chicago two years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	20 Years

**Author's Note:**

> My Miloe feels are complicated, because I waver between shipping them as my otp and shipping them as my brotp. Here's an otp moment. The title comes from the song by the Civil Wars. The whole piece was influenced by a loooot of Civil Wars, but also by the song "Comfortable" by John Mayer. (Clearly my music was on shuffle.) I used dialogue from Miles's hallucination in "Kashmir" because it worked, and please, like their reunion there wasn't even a hint lover-ish?

_There's a note underneath your front door_  
 _That I wrote twenty years ago._  
 _Yellow paper and a faded picture_  
 _And a secret in an envelope;_  
 _There's no reasons, no excuses._  
 _There's no secondhand alibis,_  
 _Just some black ink on some blue lines_  
 _And a shadow you won't recognize._  
 _In the meantime I'll be waiting_  
 _For twenty years, twenty more,_  
 _I'll be praying for redemption_  
 _And your note underneath my door_  
-20 Years, the Civil Wars 

 

Sebastian Monroe touches the photo on his desk. It’s two laughing young boys on the top stair of a front porch, sunshine in their hair and sunshine in their hearts, arms around one another’s necks and not a care in the world. It’s wrinkled from how often it’s been held, occupying the space beside him in his bed, always in his breast pocket with the picture of his family during the day to stay pressed against his heart.

As he always does, he flips it over to read the words written there. First, letters fading from age, is the inscription in his second mother’s neat handwriting, dutifully labeling every photo for memory’s sake. _Miles and Bass, Summer 1992, House in Jasper._ Under it, in his best friend’s hasty scrawl, is the only goodbye he’d gotten other than a gun in his face that hadn’t been fired: _Forgive me someday._

There is no signature, and Bass doesn’t need one to know who it’s from. Bass knows Miles’s handwriting the same way he knows his own. He’d found the photo, held safe in an envelope, under his door after Miles had fled that night. Bass had seen tears on Miles’s face as he’d turned to run, and Bass hadn’t called for the guards. The only thing worse than waking to Miles trying to shoot him would be knowing Miles was dead. Bass has scouts scouring the Republic. They have clear orders: find General Matheson, but do nothing. Find him and report his location to President Monroe—nothing more. Do not be seen.

It’s been two years, and despair weighs heavily on Bass’s heart. He’s told no one of the photo or Miles’s plea; it’s a secret for his eyes only and he doesn’t care if that intelligence could help his men tighten security around him. Something had broken between him and Miles, and no one could know better than he did. He would find out what had gone wrong. He would go to Miles and make it right. But he should have known finding Miles would be easier said than done; if Miles wanted to be hidden, he would be.

  


Miles Matheson wakes with a pounding headache, his reward for the whiskey that had lulled him to sleep the night before. Miles doesn’t sleep without the aid of whiskey anymore. Too many demons hide in the dark to let him sleep peacefully.

Being apart from Bass is hard enough, but the memory of Bass’s hurt face as Miles put a gun to his head is agony. Miles wants to claw at his brain, scrub the image away, and yet it had been his last glimpse of Bass, so he holds the image in reverence. He runs the bar as a way to keep himself in supply of alcohol, his only true friend left after he’d created the gulf between him and Bass. No, he hadn’t created the gulf—the gulf had been there, and he still doesn’t know why. But he hadn’t bridged that gap; he’d turned it from a missing step in a ladder to a chasm.

In two years, he hasn’t gone a day without seeing Bass’s tortured eyes, the shifting expression from confusion to realization to shock to pain. He forces himself to relive the moment several times every day, part of his penance for his betrayal, along with his exile. The photo and his plea that Bass forgive him had been another sign of his weakness, too weak to give Bass a clean break but instead insisting on hurting him more by reminding him of their past.

He drags himself from his bed and splashes too-cold water on his face. He doesn’t care that his cheeks go icy or that his lips are numb. He craves physical discomfort to match the raging emotions inside him. He walks down the stairs to his bar, starting the day the same way he’ll end it—with a bottle. Sometime later, he is joined by the woman he’s been seeing, Serena. It is laughable to call what they had a relationship, since Miles hardly speaks to her, but she doesn’t seem too bothered by the arrangement. She presses against him behind the bar before heading to the store room for more whiskey. Miles is drinking more than any of the patrons.

“Man, Stu, that girl is _hot_.” A regular, some farmer named Thomas or Timothy or something Miles kind of remembers is Biblical, says this in an awed voice, congratulatory and impressed. Miles watches Serena’s retreating back, watches the sway in her hips, and nods.

“She is.” He says, not looking at Bible guy, focusing instead on wiping down the bar even though it’s spotless, or at least as spotless as this place can be.

“You’re one lucky man.”

Miles makes a noncommittal sound. Miles has been many things in his life, but he’s not sure lucky is one of them. He’d been lucky, once, but that had fallen apart. The regulars had been on his back for a while about when he was going to find himself a girl. Women wanting a strong man in this post-Blackout world were ample, and Miles could offer an awful lot of protection. They’d started sending girls his way, and he’d settled on Serena mostly to get everyone to shut up.

The truth is Serena _is_ pretty hot, but not nearly as hot as the one Miles left. Serena’s hair is too long and straight, her eyes are the wrong color, she’s too uptight and frowns disapprovingly when he finishes a bottle he opened earlier in the day. It’s been a month and Miles knows it won’t last much longer, no matter how much everyone else admires her.

The problem is every time Serena turns her big green eyes on Miles, he pictures the blue ones he wants. When she smiles, Miles mourns her lack of dimples. He runs his fingers through her hair and they don’t snag on dusty curls. Her laugh is high and light instead of husky. She’s so delicate; Miles is constantly worrying about bruising her hips, pushing too hard and hurting her. For a long time, he’d not worried about these things. For a long time, sex was a wrestling match, his partner his match in strength and desire and pressure. For a long time, his strength was relished instead of feared.

But he doesn’t have that anymore. Now he has soft, small hands beneath his own. Now he has someone who always smiles with a mouth too small, always trying to impress him. Now he has someone who sits primly and doesn’t want him to see her unless she’s bathed and put together the perfect outfit.

He longs for calloused hands in his own. He longs for smiles and frowns and grimaces. He longs for the smell of sweat and whiskey and gunpowder and blood. He longs for loose gray sweatpants slung low on strong hips, longs for slouched posture and splayed legs. He longs for a hard stomach and chest, one that doesn’t give way when he lays his head there. He longs for laughter so hard his sides hurt and he snorts, longs for tears on his neck, longs for someone to pass the bottle to, longs to drop his head and close his eyes and feel strong arms around him as he just rests there. He longs for the familiarity, the comfort, the silent understanding and the lack of judgment.

He longs to be _Miles_ again, to hear his name whispered reverently like a sacred word, to feel gentle lips on his forehead, to lie in silence tangled together without putting on any airs, to yawn and stretch and scratch himself freely. He longs for inside jokes and the one person who knows everything, every last detail of him, knows the origin story of every scar and knows the meaning behind every sigh and fear and laugh, knows enough to push every button and wear every last nerve and wound him to his core, longs for curse words and loud shouting. He longs for the memories of golden sunshine days and tall grass and wooden swords, longs for slow, languishing kisses and conversations about days in the desert, longs for explosive fights and explosive sex, longs for dirty fingernails and heavenly smiles.

He never quite manages to say her name when he’s supposed to, but he’s able to stop himself from saying Bass’s. He never dreams of the woman beside him; he never dreams of anything but Bass. In his dreams, Bass’s smile is radiating heat to him, Bass’s arms are around him, and Bass’s eyes are bright and happy.

  


It is almost winter when one of his scouts returns to him, breathless and still wearing his thick overcoat in his haste to bring the news to President Monroe. Everyone has sensed the shift in the Republic and the Militia since General Matheson’s unexplained departure, and it’s impossible to miss the emptiness of President Monroe’s once-warm eyes. It is more than orders and duty that spurs the men looking for General Matheson.

“I found him, sir.” The scout doesn’t specify who the “him” in the sentence is. Bass doesn’t need it. His breath turns ragged and he puts his hand over the photograph in his breast pocket.

“Where?” He breathes.

“A bar in Chicago. He is going by an alias.” The scout says. Bass doesn’t miss the delicate curiosity on the scout’s face. He’d never dare ask, so Bass is free to ignore it.

“Stu Redman?” Bass asks. The scout nods and Bass laughs, a borderline hysterical noise that makes one of the guards start from his almost-doze at his post.

“Miles needs new ideas.” Bass says absently to himself. The scout meets one of the guards’ eyes. President Monroe has been talking to himself more and more of late. The guard would never reveal this to anyone, but he’s heard the President having full conversations with the absent General Matheson.

“Give me the exact location.” Bass orders. “Then tell Captain Baker to prepare me a horse. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

“Sir?” The scout asks incredulously. “It’s almost winter—the trip will take two months if you never stop, longer than that because you’ll _have_ to; it’ll be snowing by then.”

“Thank you for the advice.” Bass says in a silky voice that warns he is not asking for opinions. The scout immediately snaps his mouth shut. Once upon a time, President Monroe had been a reasonable man, but that had started to change even before General Matheson left. This scout’s been with the Militia for nearly seven years; he remembers when President Monroe would ask for suggestions from the men on anything from uniform style to camp locations. Yesterday he demoted a man for missing a button on his shirt.

“I’ll go tell Captain Baker, sir,” the scout says as he leaves. Bass pours himself a glass of whiskey with trembling hands, thinking of what to do. He dismisses the guards, who don’t argue but hover just outside his office doors after he shuts them. There’s a rumor that there had been as assassination attempt on the president a while back, but the president refuses to confirm it.

Bass opens a drawer in his desk and carefully extracts a book. It’s an old photo album, one he’s carried with him to deserts across the sea and across this scarred country, a photo album that hasn’t left his side since he lost his family. It’s nearly impossible to find a picture of Bass as a child without Miles in it, and Bass has spent thousands of stolen moments over the last two years tearing himself apart by looking.

Each time he looks at the pictures—including the one Miles left—the wound rips anew, not that it’s ever healed. Bass refuses to let it, even if it could. He’ll keep it fresh and raw for when Miles returns, his devotion clear. He turns the pages, looking for the picture he has in mind, tracing fingers over the faces of his father, mother, and sisters as he turns past photos of them. His dimples on his younger sister, his curls from his father, the quirk of his mouth shared by his sister, and his eyes reflected in his mother. He can’t bring them back, no matter how often he dreams of it, but he can go to Miles. He will go to Miles.

Jeremy tries to talk him out of it, of course, and Jeremy’s allowed to speak more freely than anyone else. When it’s realized that Bass will go no matter what, Jeremy offers to come along. Bass refuses. This is part of the secret with Miles. No one knows, though some suspect, that their relationship was not strictly fraternal. No one knows why Miles left. No one will know why he comes back.

Except Bass and Miles.

  


The onset of winter does nothing to change Miles’s mood. He is surly even on the best of days, so now, when his ice cold feet have no warm calves to slide beneath for heat, he is sullen and sad and pained. His only warmth is the burn of whiskey in his throat. Serena left months ago, citing his drinking and his moods and his lack of communication. He doesn’t miss her. He doesn’t have much room to miss anyone when his days are consumed with self-hatred and longing for Bass.

He heads down the stairs to the bar, not to open it but to raid it, and notices a splash of white at the door. He frowns. Is snow getting inside? He stoops closer to find an envelope pushed through the crack between the door and the frame that he’d been meaning to fix for months. His heart, catching on before his brain, starts to pound in his chest.

The photo inside makes him gasp. Two Marines in a blinding desert, each with one arm around the other Marine and one arm flexed for the camera, smile with eyes more pained and world-worn than they have right to be at their age, clean and crisp uniforms belying the bloodbath they’d endured hours before. Miles’s hands are shaking so badly he accidentally drops the photo. He picks it up quickly, running his fingers softly over the curve of Bass’s face. He flips the photo over to check the back and is rewarded with Bass’s neat handwriting. _You’ve always been forgiven._

Miles is crying, he thinks—his throat is tight, that much is sure, but his eyes don’t quite know how to cry anymore, after years of denying them the right. He flings the door open, praying for Bass to be waiting on his stoop. There’s no one there, no one walking about on the streets because of the heavily falling snow and gusting wind. Miles leaves the door open and runs out to the street, coatless and clutching the picture to his chest. He turns in circles, eyes searching desperately for Bass, yelling Bass’s name against the wind whipping the sounds from his lips.

Miles spends a long time walking up the empty street, calling for Bass, his voice gaining in desperation, before he gives up. He’s fully crying now, shuddering and shivering from cold and disappointment. The wind’s blown his door all the way open, letting swirls of snow into the bar. He closes the door and steps over the mess, still murmuring Bass’s name. He convinces himself Bass slipped in through the open door while he was out on the street and bounds up to his room, taking the steps two at a time, flinging open the door to his dingy bedroom with Bass’s name on his lips. The room is empty and Miles’s bitter tears begin again. He sinks onto his bed, alternating between staring at Bass’s sunshine smile in the photo and the promise written on the back. Where did he go?

Miles slips fitfully into sleep, waking often from dreams of Bass to his empty room. Miles finally gives up on sleeping, opting instead to go downstairs to the bar to sit huddled on the ground against the bar beneath the blanket from his bed, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and the picture in the other.

The door opens hours later and Miles wakes with a jerk. He had unlocked the door knowing Bass would be the only person who would come in, but he still can’t believe his eyes when they rest on the one thing he’d been praying to see for two years. Miles is rooted to the spot, unable to even breathe, let alone move.

Bass closes the door slowly and locks it behind him deliberately. Miles simply waits as Bass walks over to him and stoops down beside him. And then Bass’s face is splitting into that wide smile and it’s like clouds parting to let the sun in; Bass’s arms are going around Miles and Bass’s voice is in his ear, warm breath sending shivers down his spine, whispering, “Miles, Miles.” and Miles is crying again because he’s terrified it’s another dream, it’s a ghost, it’s madness from all the whiskey and loneliness and guilt.

“Am I hallucinating?” He whispers, and Bass pulls back to peer into his bloodshot eyes.

“You look like hell warmed over.” Bass says.

“Well…things haven’t been so easy.” Miles is blinking rapidly to see if he’ll disappear, still not trusting that this is real. Bass reads the worry perfectly, because he’s Bass.

“Does this feel like a hallucination?” Bass presses his lips to Miles’s and Miles lets the whiskey fall from his hand, letting his hand run up Bass’s spine to twist into that hair. Miles feels the tears on his face mingling with tears sliding out from between Bass’s closed eyelids. He pulls back to look at Bass, the words in his throat dying for a minute at the vision before him.

“I—” He clears his throat and starts again, voice rough. “I’m sorry.”

Bass rests their foreheads together, unwilling to let go of the contact. “I forgive you.”

Miles sets the photo of them as Marines down gently so he can hold Bass’s face in both hands. He runs his fingers over Bass’s face, relearning the feel of Bass, tracing the new lines around those beautiful eyes that two years apart had caused. Bass sighs and Miles feels his heart stutter.

“You look tired, brother.” Bass says as he pulls Miles closer.

“I am tired, Bass. I missed you so much,” Miles admits.

“Why did you leave?” Bass asks, and it’s not accusatory even though Miles deserves accusations, hatred, poison from Bass’s lips.

“I couldn’t stay.” Miles says, which is not an explanation. Bass raises his hands to pull Miles’s off his face, intertwining their fingers instead.

“Miles, I need to know.” Bass whispers. “I forgive you, but I need to know.”

Miles stares at their hands, just listening to Bass breathing for a minute. “There were people who were…plotting. They wanted you dead.” It’s hard to tell the story, a story he’d kept buried for so long, both because it cut him to his core to remember and because it will hurt Bass. “A lot of people thought you were losing touch with reality.”

Bass goes still and Miles looks into his eyes again. “People think I’m going crazy.” Bass murmurs. It’s not a question and it’s not past tense.

“Some people did.” Miles says. “And I…” He has to look away. “I was worried.” _I was worried you were losing your mind. I was worried you were broken. I was worried your paranoia was going to kill us all._

“Worried seems like an understatement.” Bass’s voice is raw, bordering on accusatory now, and Miles longs for Bass to hit him. He deserves a bullet, really, though he knows Bass will never do it. Miles looks at Bass, seeing all the pain he feels mirrored on Bass’s face.

“It went too far. It just got to be…so much blood.” He makes sure he doesn’t sound indignant. He remembers Bass defining the word once, standing up in front of the class and speaking confidently, even back then. _Righteous anger_ , he’d said in his sure voice that Miles had loved listening to then without fully understanding why. There is no righteousness in Miles’s explanation here. Bass just nods silently.

“I knew they were going to kill you. And I…well, I started going to their meetings as a way to know what they were up to. I just wanted to keep you safe. I pretended—I—” Miles falters, because he doesn’t want to say it, but Bass deserves the full explanation, deserves to know the full extent of Miles’s treason. “I pretended I wanted you dead, too.” He says it quietly, looking down, and marvels when Bass doesn’t let go of his hands.

“Yeah, you’d have to, to gain their trust.” Bass allows. Miles wants to hide. He doesn’t deserve Bass. He never has.

“I volunteered to do the assassination.” He whispers, letting the words tumble out now, going fast like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I didn’t know what to do. I decided at least if I did it, they wouldn’t find secret ways into your room or anything. I went through so many plans. I thought I could fake your death. But how could I do that? I thought I could just get caught and let the guards kill me before I got to your room. But I knew the rebels would keep trying, and I wouldn’t be there to keep you safe. Then I thought…well, if I woke you up, so you saw I was there and what was happening, then maybe…well, maybe you’d kill me but you’d at least know, so you could get more guards and stay safe.”

“You thought I could ever kill you?” Bass asks quietly, letting his thumb stroke over Miles’s knuckles in an action Miles had missed so much he could cry from that alone.

“I hoped you would. I was helping assassinate you.”

“Miles.” Bass lets go of one hand so he can tip Miles’s face up to look at him. “You just told me the plans you thought through and you didn’t mention actually killing me in any of them.”

This is the worst part. Miles’s throat closes up, threatening to keep the words captive so he can sit with Bass holding his hand forever. “I did think of it.” Miles finally says, wanting to just die when he sees Bass’s head jerk back almost like Miles had hit him, sees his eyes widen, surprise and hurt stealing across his face.

“What?”

“They told me you were losing your mind, that you’d go all the way over the edge soon. They told me you were in pain…not physically; they told me you were…you were _tortured_. They said it would be better to put you out of your misery. And I thought—well, I thought if someone was going to kill you, at least it could be someone who loved you; at least I could know you were gone so I could shoot myself, too.”

Silence hangs between them for so long Miles wonders if they can ever recover from this admission. Bass is still holding his hand and Miles doesn’t know what that means.

“How Romeo and Juliet of you.” When Bass finally speaks, his voice is thick with emotion, but Miles doesn’t pick up a hint of bitterness. He looks up quickly, searching Bass’s face. A tear is rolling slowly down Bass’s cheek, and Miles raises a hand to thumb it away almost unconsciously.

“I’m sorry.” Miles whispers. He wonders how many times he’ll need to say it to make things better. Bass starts crying in earnest then, sobs making him quake, and Miles can’t stop himself from wrapping one arm around Bass’s waist and the other around his neck. Bass presses his face to Miles’s neck and cries, not even self-conscious of how he’s always the one crying. He feels Miles’s tears in his hair and it makes him cry harder.

It’s a long time before either of them stops crying, but Bass finally sits up, snot trailing and his eyes dry from losing all their moisture. He laughs a little, the way he always does after he’s been crying hard, because he always feels ridiculous. He looks at Miles and Miles looks about as bad as Bass feels; Bass is used to crying, but Miles doesn’t do it much (not enough, Bass is always telling him) and looks shell-shocked.

“I’m sorry.” Miles says it again, says it like he’ll repeat it a thousand times, and Bass presses a finger to Miles’s lips.

“Miles, I forgive you. I already told you that.”

“But—” Miles tries to speak around Bass’s finger, so Bass presses harder and shakes his head.

“Not another word.” Bass commands. He waits for Miles to nod obediently before removing his finger from Miles’s lips. He picks up the picture Miles had set carefully beside them, smiling a little as he looks at it. He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out the one Miles had left him.

“I kept it here the whole time.” He says, the same wistful smile on his face. Miles rests his chin on Bass’s shoulder to look at the pictures. Bass tips his head to rest it against Miles’s. “By my heart.” He adds. Miles turns his head and kisses Bass’s cheek, stretches up to kiss his temple. Bass can be so poetic, but Miles can only show his sentiment with actions.

“I never stopped dreaming of you.” He tells Bass. Bass sets the pictures down and turns toward Miles, takes Miles’s face in his hands, pressing their foreheads together with his eyes closed before bridging the gap and kissing Miles, a lot less gentle than before. Miles feels desperate and needy and anxious that Bass will disappear and matches the force of Bass’s kisses, their teeth crashing together before biting one another’s lips. This is what he’s been missing—rough but not harsh; strong and a little painful but in the best way.

Bass is whispering his name over and over like it’s a prayer and Miles knows he’ll never tire of hearing it. It’s not long before they’re undressing one another, each needing to see and feel the body he’d missed so much, and neither of them last long. It’s not creative and it’s not the first time they’ve had sex on a dirty floor, but it’s perfect.

Miles pulls the blanket around them when they’re spent and remember the chill in the room. They’re back to their slouched seated position, resting against the counter behind the bar. His legs are entwined with Bass’s and his head is resting against Bass’s chest, hearing the melody of his heart that’s better than any song Miles has ever heard. Bass is running calloused hands up and down his back and Miles is practically purring.

“I think it might be true.” Bass says.

“Huh?” Miles is never eloquent but considerably less so after sex.

“I’m going crazy.”

Miles looks up at Bass, and it’s not a joke. Bass’s face is serious and sad and Miles feels a sudden weight on his chest.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m so paranoid, Miles. Always. I think everyone’s after me. I think I hear them all whispering. I-I really do hear whispering.”

“You hear voices?” Miles asks, mouth dry, and Bass nods and looks so lost Miles has to squeeze his arm to make sure he’s still solid.

Miles stays quiet for a minute, thinking. “Maybe it’s stress.” Miles finally says, drawing a noncommittal shrug from Bass. A plan’s been forming in Miles’s head since the minute Bass walked in, but he’s not sure Bass will like it.

“Let’s run for it.” Miles suggests. Bass twists to look down at him.

“Run for it?” He echoes.

“You and me. Let’s just go. Leave this place—” He waves a hand at the bar around them. “—leave the Republic, just go. Just the two of us.”

Bass stares at him for a long time and Miles is worried he’s just started a new fight. He doesn’t want to fight. He wants to snuggle with Bass every night with no real responsibilities and no worries and no more blood on his hands until he drops dead of a heart attack when he’s a hundred years old, a heart attack probably brought on from looking at Bass because he’s so hot it’ll make his heart stop.

“Where are we going to go?” Bass asks, making Miles’s head shoot up off Bass’s collarbone and almost smack into Bass’s forehead as Bass leans toward him. Luckily Bass has quick reflexes and dodges him with a little laugh.

“Are you agreeing? You’ll just leave everything, stop being the president?” Miles’s voice squeaks like he’s 15 again and he doesn’t care.

“Well.” Bass shrugs. “I never really wanted any of it, the Republic, the Militia, the men. All I need is you. If I’m going crazy, at least you’ll be there to take care of me.”

“I’ll always take care of you.” Miles promises, kissing his way from the tip of one shoulder, across Bass’s chest, across the hollow of his throat, to the tip of the other shoulder. “Unless you start shitting your pants. Then you’re on your own.”

Bass roars with laughter. “Deal.” He says. They forego a handshake and seal it with a kiss.


End file.
